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Posted on 12/19/2002 4:09:36 AM PST by Elle Bee
Edited on 04/23/2004 12:05:05 AM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
What do Trent Lott and Bill Clinton have in common? Not enough for Lott to survive.
Trent Lott and Bill Clinton were both born poor in the Deep South of the 1940s. Both crawled their way to the top of the national political heap with enormous grit and drive. Both are extremely stubborn men who instinctively refuse to bow to pressure and quit when controversy envelopes them. The difference is that Bill Clinton could be removed as president only by a two-thirds vote of the Senate--something his party's loyal support precluded. But Trent Lott's support within his party is melting away, and right now he is nowhere near the 26 votes from GOP Senate colleagues he needs to retain his job.
(Excerpt) Read more at opinionjournal.com ...
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Vacant Lott has been the Sleeper Shill for the dems long before wet-blanketing Clinton's impeachment trial
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Now it is a meta-physcial law of nature, widely known from the dawn of time, that the GOP might take one step forward, always a tentative, barely noticeable, step albeit, that to be followed, instantly by Holy Writ, five/six/ ... steps back. Mind you, more often than not, always self-inflicted ... what did Newt say ... what sound bite went with which.
Yup, every elected GOP representative is issued at least a dozen, batteries included, a "must use" foot-in-mouth card; on the back of which are the local/national telephone numbers of the fourth-estate outlets, the DNC press office, ... and for ease in calling - all are 800 numbers.
Harvey Pitt, for example, is but another recent instance. What was Dubya thinking? Even against the longest of all punit's/historical odds as seen in this last mid-term election by winning the Senate back, and there's that too much air spray inhaled by Senator Lott ... again!
Notwithstanding that vacant-Lott's comments were at a private function in honor of an old fellow (once known as " ... if we had known it would have caused all this much fuss, we'd have picked our own damn cotton ...) - where's that Waxman "everybody does it ... ," or Zoe's "It was a private affair... " defense from the GOP [viz., clueless]?
Not that good old boy Trent (nee infantile) is beyond repair - it is the GOP agenda which is approaching that state - just a'slippin' away. Even with the hurdles of booby-Hatch's "leadership" to puzzle, an economic policy to move forward, a possible dust-up with Iraq, ... who knows what else ... plus 2004 a'comin' ...
Now DC's GOP crowd might be stupid and foolish ... Oops - never mind.
Hell, I'd be willing to bet that there are a couple of so-called Pubbie pundits who function as the equivalent of Chicago machine Republicans - Democrats whose job it is to live as Republicans full-time, so that the ward bosses have got an "opposition party" poll-watcher election night. The more I think about it, nobody, not even "Vacant" Lott, could be as stupid as the ones who shot their mouths off, handing an immediate surrender to the Democrats. Looks like Sid called in some markers. ;-)
The cleft stick of the Pubbie pundits' own making - if Lott leaves and is replaced by someone who refuses to kowtow to the racist warlords, Chafee and the other RINOs have a PERFECT excuse to leave the party in a huff.
It must be nice to have the 'A' media team - I just shake my head in wonder at this fictional "controversy" that has been created out of thin air.
I really am tired of all the whining and hating about Lott not trying to impeach the President. You need a 2/3 vote to convict and remove a President. The votes were not going to be there. What was the point of stopping the government and the country for 6 or more months? I think he did the necessasry thing. Not only was there not enough votes to do it, but there wasn't enough public support to do it either.
We made a big mistake of basing our behavior on hating President Clinton. What we did was to force the House to indict Clinton full well knowing he would never be convicted. The dark side of human nature seduces us away from the light. Once into the dark side you have a feeling of sublime moral superiority such that you can destroy but not build.
I believe Senator Lott will do his best and make a good decision. If his colleagues feel otherwise they can choose another ML. In the meantime, it is better to look in the daylight at the facts of all matters rather than stumble and strike in the dark.
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However, it could have come from SC's still junior Senator, old boy Fritz, at about the time that he insisted that the "Stars and Bars" be flown over the SC capitol building. Low country sand-lappers.
"Morgan Pillsbury has accused conservative pundit John Fund of sitting on her and choking her, but she and her mother can still praise his rhetorical skills. "This guy is persuasive," said her mother, Melinda Pillsbury-Foster, in an interview last week. "He gets you on the phone and you believe him. He says, 'You know I wouldn't lie.'"
"He's such a good liar," Pillsbury added, "he could walk in right now and he could convince me in five minutes he never hit me. He is the best liar I've ever seen."
"Fund is, of course, the former editorial-page editor of The Wall Street Journal, and he has categorically denied abusing Pillsbury, who is his ex-girlfriend and the daughter of a prominent Libertarian family in California. But she says that's just his game. One of his most damaging "lies," she says, came in 1997, when Matt Drudge published the false rumor that former Clinton aide Sidney Blumenthal had physically abused his wife. After Drudge retracted the report and apologized, Fund denied claims that he had been a source for what he knew to be "idle party chatter." But Pillsbury says, "It was a story Fund spread with joy. He was Drudge's source and he knew it wasn't true."
"Pillsbury's claim has historical significance because Blumenthal sued Drudge in 1997, hoping to discover his sources. Fund denied communicating with Drudge, and the Journal threatened to quash a subpoena. Blumenthal settled the suit unsuccessfully last year without collecting money or sources. (He paid Drudge $2500 in fees.)
"Says Drudge of Pillsbury's claim, "It's a pack of lies." Drudge says he first met Fund at Fox News, "a year or two" after publishing the false rumor, "maybe 1999. It was the first communication I had with him."
"Ironically, Fund is now fighting a real assault charge filed against him in February. A court hearing is set for May 16, and on that day, Fund has reportedly been telling friends, the D.A. plans to drop the assault charges and arrest Pillsbury for fraud (specifically, stealing money from Fund's bank account). Pillsbury denies the fraud.
""The only way we're safe dealing with these people is to make a big stink," says Pillsbury-Foster. Among her complaints, she notes that Assistant District Attorney Eric Arnone has ignored reports of attempted break-ins to Pillsbury's apartment and has never asked Pillsbury for details about the alleged abuse. Instead, Arnone grilled Pillsbury about "everything he could find that might be to her discredit," including Pillsbury's testimony in her mother's divorce.
"And that's not all. Three months after she pressed charges, Pillsbury says the D.A.'s office has yet to retrieve possessions she left behind in Fund's Jersey City apartment, including her passport, birth certificate, driver's license, selected clothes, jewelry belonging to her mother, and floppy disks containing personal files. Finally, Pillsbury says Arnone told her that when she filed charges, no photos were taken. (That's odd, because the police report indicates that she was bruised and photos were taken.)
"According to one knowledgeable source, District Attorney Robert Morgenthau has been personally involved in the case from the start, his prosecutors do question Pillsbury's credibility, and the office seeks to avoid a high-profile case. [Nice to have friends]
"Asked what she wants from the D.A., Pillsbury's mother said, "I want him to prosecute John Fund to the full extent possible. If the law is going to be effective as a cultural tool, it has to demonstrate to everybody watching that being abusive doesn't pay, which means the victim should be able to go on to live a full and happy life having learned that they can't be abused, and the abuser should learn that it's going to cost them to be abusive." Instead, she fears that Fund will be given a "license to abuse."
"Pillsbury-Foster has special insight into Fund, having had her own affair with him two decades ago. Her daughter met Fund in 1998 and soon became pregnant, whereupon he asked her to get an abortion and allegedly told Pillsbury-Foster that the only relationship he'd had with her daughter was to "feed her cat." Pillsbury was so irked, she secretly taped a conversation in which Fund berated her for telling her mother about their affair. The tape showed up on WeaselSearch.com last September, after which Pillsbury claims Fund told his bosses that the tape was a fake, and that Pillsbury had merely "spent a few nights on his couch."
"In fact, Pillsbury had moved in full-time last summer, and Fund treated her as his "do-it-yourself Stepford wife," according to her mother. Pillsbury says that when she first moved in, she found no food, only lots of dirty dishes, unopened mail, and bottles of alcohol from hotel mini-bars. The freezer was empty and "completely covered with living, crawling bugs," while the floors were "covered with piles of black socks and dirty underwear." She began cleaning up the mess. As she was paying overdue cable and phone bills and putting household purchases on her credit card, she says, Fund instructed her to write checks from his checkbook. "He showed me how to write the check and how to write his name, with a curlicue under it."
"Pillsbury first called the police November 12, the night after a bad fight, and called again later that month. "He was supposed to spend Thanksgiving with me and didn't," she recalls. "I questioned him when he got home and he beat me up. I was cowering in the corner. He was screaming. He said, 'Get out, bitch,' and he left, and I called the police. He came back and beat me up again. When the police arrived, I was shaking and crying and very upset. He was very calm. A lady officer walked in and asked me if I was on drugs. John told me that none of the charges would stick."
"In mid January, the mainstream media first reported on Fund's alleged abuse. Around that time, Pillbury says, she moved out and Fund agreed to give her money to help pay her bills. He watched her write checks from his account and deposit them in her account. Soon after, she says, "I found out that my accounts were frozen and he told me that they were going to stay frozen until I contacted these members of the media and gave them papers saying that I had lied about the abuse." She says the bank did not return her calls. Says Pillsbury-Foster, "This is obviously part of a pattern of abuse and attempted control, and yet the D.A. refused to listen to her."
"Pillsbury lives in the Village now. Fund is a columnist for OpinionJournal.com. According to Pillsbury-Foster, their final fight, the one that left the bruise, occurred because "he wanted her to go to the media and say that she had lied." In her last conversation with Fund, Pillsbury-Foster says, he asked how she could believe her daughter's lies and repeated his belief that "this is all part of the great liberal conspiracy to get me, because I am the hope of freedom."
"The D.A.'s office declined a detailed request for comment, as did Fund. Fund offered only the following statement: "By inviting Morgan Pillsbury to David Brock's book party last month as a personal guest, Cynthia Cotts has made The Village Voice cross the line from objective observer to participant in this sad story. It's not good journalism."
Really the kind of man the neocons look for when they want to dump on poor old Lott. You know, someone who is definitely morally superior.
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